An example popped into my inbox the other day which perfectly demonstrated how music library management must be approached in different ways.

In this case, it was an example of how syntax and the correctness of tags intertwine. More specifically, in the case of bliss's new correctness rules, how dates should be judged when they are stored in different date formats.

The email read:

Unfortunately the assessment of the date field in a lot of albums is giving an erroneous "non-compliant" result. In most cases, that's because a full date [including month and day-of-month] is present already, and tests negative against the year-only.

Here's an example in action:

bliss's current correction code for the date/year Field is pretty basic, and doesn't allow this one to pass.

However, I think in this case, the current year isn't incorrect as such, just different; it contains more information and is formatted differently.

Therefore, I decided that such a difference should not be adjudged "incorrect" and, instead, if there are requirements around formatting of dates, they should take the form of a separate rule. All of these rules are "pipelined" together, so source data can be reformatted into the target format.

So, for completeness, since making the date/year field accept such cases, the assessment now looks like:

This was in the 20170510 release. Keep that feedback coming!

Thanks to Mr Cup / Fabien Barral for the image above.